Pamputa wants to acquire mining rights from MMG Ltd. in the area where roughly 3,000 artisanal diggers and support workers are active, according to a document the community sent last month. The plan is to bring those miners into the formal system while MMG agrees to buy what they produce.
Government-brokered negotiations will bring company and community representatives together in Cusco on Friday to review the proposal and seek agreements. MMG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Las Bambas produces nearly 2% of mined copper worldwide. It cost 10 billion dollars to build, making it the biggest single investment in Peru's history. With a price tag of 10 billion dollars, its construction ranks as Peru's largest-ever investment. Production kicked off in 2016, two years after MMG - owned by China Minmetals Corp. - acquired the asset from Glencore Plc in 2014.
Artisanal crews working on MMG's Las Bambas concessions have become a pressure point. MMG estimates these workers have extracted about 90,000 metric tons of contained copper and has filed multiple illegal-mining complaints as it tries to secure access to the area, while the artisanal operations threaten to delay the development of a third pit. In Peru, land ownership is legally separate from rights to the minerals below, and that split is central here.
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Access is complicated because Pamputa controls the surface - worked for farming and for raising livestock for generations - whereas MMG has the state concession to extract the copper below. Pamputa controls the surface lands - used for farming and raising livestock for generations - whereas MMG possesses the state-issued mining concession for the copper below, which complicates access.
High commodity prices and relatively loose rules have pulled hundreds of thousands of informal miners into Peru's metals sector in recent years, intensifying disputes over mineral rights. Big projects run by MMG and peers like Southern Copper Corp. have felt the strain as the industry races to supply copper tied to data centers and power grid expansion.
At the disputed site, ore from the Apu Chunta quarry travels by truck for over 400 miles before reaching processing plants. The community's document states that the resulting concentrate is marketed to traders including Trafigura Group, IXM SA and Glencore. Policy is shifting too.
Informal miners can register under Reinfo, a temporary registry created about a decade ago that has been extended several times and which industry leaders say has sheltered illegal activity. President Keiko Fujimori's government intends for Reinfo to end at the close of 2026, to be superseded by a system that grants registered miners two years to formalize.
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